When Sandra Cisneros was writing her new book “Have You Seen Marie?” she thought of it as a fairy tale, not to say that any princesses in distress or saucer-eyed woodland creatures make an appearance.

“The fairy tales I like were written for adults,” says the San Antonio author, best known for her 1984 coming-of-age story “The House on Mango Street” and her 2002 novel “Caramelo.” “Hans Christian Andersen is one of my favorite writers, and he wrote for adults.”

Cisneros is one of six authors featured at the 2012 Express-News Book & Author Luncheon.

The book, slim at 101 pages, revolves around the search for a lost cat. The narrative becomes a springboard for a moving exploration of loss. Color illustrations by Chicana artist Ester Hernández document the people, places, plants and animals of Cisneros' King William neighborhood.

The author, 57, was still reeling from the 2007 death of her mother when the events that inspired “Have You Seen Marie?” transpired. Shortly after writer Rosalind Bell arrived in San Antonio from Tacoma, Wash., for a residency sponsored by Cisneros' Macondo Foundation, her cat ran away. In the book, the women wind through the King William and Lavaca neighborhoods, searching for the errant kitty. Along the way, they encounter various neighborhood denizens, some of whom are dealing with losses of their own.

Cisneros approached Hernández, a friend, about doing illustrations for the book in part because the artist, too, had suffered the loss of her mother and “she was in the same place.”

“She liked the story very much, and I had her come out and walk around the neighborhood with me. I would point out the things that I knew — all the little things that to me make up the neighborhood,” Cisneros says. “I told Ester, ‘This is going to be the kind of book that I want you to illustrate what I see in my mind, but I'm not saying in the story.'”

A promotional video by filmmaker Ray Santisteban available on youtube.com likewise documents the real-life backdrop for the story.

The first time Cisneros read the story as a work-in-progress for an audience, people approached her afterward to talk about “that children's story you wrote about the cat.”

“And I thought, ‘What children's story?'” Cisneros recalls. “But I think people are going to feel it's for children because it has illustrations. But all my work that children like has never been written for them. I always write things for just human beings, and different people come to my stories at different ages.”